Northwest Indiana Discussion

A few months ago on May 6th, during that long night of awaiting presidential primary results from Gary, Hammond Mayor Tom McDermott, Jr., was introduced for the first time to the nation’s cable-television audience. It was not an auspicious occasion. But lo! There he was on CNN, engaged for what seemed like hours in futile discussion with Gary Mayor Rudy Clay, stifling his anger and contempt while attempting to reconcile and/or explain to CNN news anchor Wolf Blitzer and its chief Washington-bureau correspondent, John King, why the Lake County election board insisted on deferring release of election returns until all the absentee ballots had been hand-counted.

McDermott, you will recall, was not only an avid supporter of Senator Hillary Clinton here in the Region, he has since been credited among the national Democratic Party’s elite, as being instrumental in delivering Lake County for Clinton. Yet the kudos earned, and the recognition it has since imparted to his fledgling political career, nearly failed to materialize, for in November 2007, McDermott barely eeked out a second-term election victory, winning by less than 500 votes. This clearly shook to the core, if not McDermott, then most certainly his local coalition and those dependent on him.

Indeed, Mac’s tireless efforts and exertions during the Indiana presidential primary, when coupled with East Chicago’s electoral support, arguably served to sufficiently offset the large voter turnout in Gary for Senator Barack Obama. Meanwhile, it wasn’t until early Friday morning around 1:30 a.m., May 7th, that the Gary vote was substantially tallied and released, finally showing Obama had ultimately won Lake County. Eerily, Obama carried about ten of Indiana’s 92 counties, but he lost the state only by some fourteen-thousand votes, votes it was hoped, Gary’s large turnout would help make-up.

The upshot of the deferred returns was that the Clinton campaign was denied an opportunity to take a primetime victory lap on national television, a celebration that may very well have fueled increased electoral momentum, despite the same day’s primary loss in North Carolina. Timeliness was everything.

Needless to say, Mayor McDermott’s frustration at the deferral was not isolated, for he had pressed into campaign service a good many members of his administration and those most active in his coalition. After all, irrespective of mass-media technology and its capacity to project a message over large geo-political land masses, ensuring voters get to the polls and actually vote requires more than rhetoric or local media depicting Clinton downing shots of Crown Royal, even if it was a nice touch.

It is difficult, then, to now fathom McDermott’s silence about those among his supporters who actively suppress free political speech. As a result, a dark, palpable, totalitarian virus now permeates this city. It is unclear as to why or how it has happened, but the confidence of the McDermott coalition is hollow and perhaps irremediably eroded. Shaken and apparently still reeling from last November’s election, they have lost their grip on democratic values and reality. Today in Hammond, any content posted on the Times’ message board contesting the interpretation of events, transactions and decisions put out by McDermott’s minions, any view seriously critiquing the mayor or his administration’s decisions and action is, for all intents and time-relevant purposes - deleted. Equally alarming, though, is the Times’ apparent acquiescence in the practice. For it was Times itself that not only believed the abuse of its thread/post deletion/suspension feature was serious enough to expose-at-large, it was further compelled to mildly chastise McDermott in a follow-up editorial, about a week later, for complaining too much instead making public efforts to discipline those abridging the first amendment rights of Hammond citizens.

Moreover, the suppression of first amendment rights continues unabated in Hammond, with McDermott and those of his coalition as the beneficiaries of the subversive practice. When I emailed both the Times’ executive editor and its publisher, a petition requesting them to intervene and review my posts (see listed below) and to determine for themselves whether its content constituted mere “graffiti” (as McDermott characterized the opinions of Hammond’s citizens utilizing the Times board to voice their views) I was informed by executive editor Billy Nangle that the chatboard was self-policing, and that he regretted the difficulties I was experiencing.

I replied, “What a cop-out. Then what is the point of posting on your chatboard if it can be deleted at will? This renders the board's value and utility entirely illusory and to the extent your corporation relies on it as means of justifying advertising rates, it represents a dubious counting of hits on your web site.”

Warning: There is something very dangerously wrong going on here in Hammond. Something treacherously totalitarian has invaded and infected the psyches of our body politic. It is no longer healthy here to be anything but pro-McDermott if you value your existential right to free political speech. For instance, last year I took to the Times’ board to critically comment about Valparaiso Mayor Jon Costas. I was even informed by email that the Porter County section of the chatboard was vehemently pro-Costas, and to expect strong opposition to my posts from his supporters. This in fact was the case, but at no time did any of the Costas supporters ever delete my initial posts or any of the succeeding posts. After we finished advancing our arguments, the readers there were free to judge for themselves the merits of what was said. Here in Hammond, though, there is only one voice and alternate views are suppressed. Consequently, due to suppression of alternate views and critique, any and all potential political benefits necessarily accrue to one political faction: the current administration. And the sheer persistence of the abusive practice renders these more than mere acts of individual spite.

Perhaps it’s the anxiety over the looming budget cuts to take place in next two years, or perhaps it’s lingering failure at the Woodmar shopping center, to clean it up and secure the long term commitment of Carson Pirie Scott – or perhaps it’s the still pending fruition of the Cabela’s initiatives, and/or that of the River Park demolition/development strategy; whatever it is NO ONE IS PERMITTED TO SAY ANYTHING CRITICAL OF IT or the McDermott administration, on the Times message board.

Make no mistake, active subversion of First Amendment rights is dark totalitarianism, and the mayor’s failure to publicly denounce it, attempt to publicly remedy it, and the Times’ passive tolerance of such practices, in light of a scrutinization feature and a full-time board monitor, is the stuff of what Ronald Reagan once called an “Evil empire.”

[The list of threads at issue in the order posted:
The Fallout from McDermott’s Minions
McDermott’s Minions: A Glimpse at the Totalitarian Mindset
Do Cuban Gov’t & Mac’s Minions Drum Same Beat